Colbert March 20th--Was Stiassny Playing Along, or Pissed Off?

Cafe Society
1

I don’t know how much people generally know about Colbert going into this. I imagine it varies.

Does anyone know if Melanie Stiassny (the museum curator) understood Colbert wasn’t being serious, or was she genuinely exasperated with him?

-FrL-

2

I think the last bit, with her squirting him in the face, spoke to her understanding that it was a joke (though she may not have imagined the extent to which he would be “in character”).

3

I think both.

Here’s the segment in question: http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId=164483

4

I wasn’t sure that was actually her in that last scene. We only saw a blurry figure, only from the back…

-FrL-

5

Seems pretty obvious to me that she’s in on the joke. She’s doing a great job of playing along, but you can see her start to crack a couple of times.

6

I saw her start to do a “patient smile” at a couple of points. Could we be talking about the same thing?

-FrL-

7

I guess we’re interpreting it differently. It looks like to me as if she’s fighting an urge to laugh at moments when she’s supposed to be angry, e.g., at 5:10 to 5:20 in the video. Now if it were just a matter of trying to stay cool and professional, I think she would be trying harder not to let her annoyance show as well. Also, her last line, “yeah, there is one,” is just too perfectly scripted a setup for the final gag.

If she wasn’t aware of the setup from the beginning, and I doubt that she wasn’t, she certainly would have clued in when the martini shaker magically appeared.

8

Oh yeah, I forgot about that part!

(Though it seems pretty clearly to be a scene edited in after the other events.)

-FrL-

9

As a non-actor, she may have found it frustrating to play along with his very dense character - it got a little awkward during the “Noah’s Ark” bit - but I thought she smiled a bit during the “ice skating/water skiing” part. And she did let him make the martini.

In reality I am pretty sure Colbert makes it clear to his guests that he is playing a character before they get started. (Other people have posted cites to that effect, I think.) He doesn’t ambush people. So Stiassny would have known what the act was.

10

And we accept your apology.

11

He should go to that creation museum in Kentucky.